Reports in this morning’s Irish Times reveal the extent to which senior Anglo bankers had become players in the property game in their own right. Eight senior managers completely lost the run of themselves, running up nearly €22m in property loans by end-September 2008, the day the government put in place the €440bn blanket bank guarantee. This really was a case of gamekeeper turned poacher.

Almost half of the total loans proposed for transfer to NAMA are accounted for by Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide alone which had become frontier outposts in the Wild West of Irish crony capitalism. It now turns out that the very people tasked with managing the Anglo’s property lending were up to their necks in property deals themselves. Fianna Fail’s entire handling of the banking crisis has been marked by a determination to protect a toxic triangle of bad bankers, delinquent developers and pliant politicians.

Since its crisis nationalisation earlier this year, Anglo Irish Bank seems to have disappeared into the Department of Finance without a trace. It is a black hole that sucks in taxpayers’ money and spits out revelations of bad banking practice, each more outrageous than the last. There is no public accountability, zero transparency and no sign that this is set to change any time soon. Anglo is a case-study on how not to nationalise a bank.

We simply must get to the bottom of what went on at Anglo in the years running up to its eventual nationalisation. The constant drip-drip of revelations through the media is no way to conduct an investigation that can secure public trust. The Labour Party has consistently called for the appointment of an inspector to Anglo under the direction of the High Court.

Reports this weekend that Anglo will require several billion euro more taxpayers’ money over the coming year raise deep concerns. Having nationalised Anglo, Fianna Fail now don’t seem to know what to do with it except to keep throwing money at it.

€3.8bn of taxpayers’ money has already been pumped into the bank, with banking sources – as reported in the Sunday Business Post of September 20th, 2009 – speculating that this could rise to €10bn or more over the next year. To put this in perspective, this is twice total amount of spending cuts proposed by An Bord Snip Nua, or about €2,500 for every man, woman and child in the country.

Rather than proceeding with an orderly wind-up, Fianna Fail seem determined at all costs to keep the doors of the developers’ bank open for business. It appears that they are now set to throw billions more good money after bad while preparing a hairshirt budget to pay for it all. Anglo looks set to be a massive drain on scarce public finances for years to come.